


Victory Condition

by katsu



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:14:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4274826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsu/pseuds/katsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a reason Shaxx and Saladin don't get along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory Condition

**Author's Note:**

> Without a definitive answer on species for either character, this fic assumes Shaxx is human and Saladin is exo. It was much more interesting that way. (Written before RoI.)

The Ghosts have all gone quiet; that’s how he knows Shaxx is on his way. Saladin has asked his own Ghost in the past, what causes this silence. The Ghosts certainly aren’t shy about expressing their opinions, volubly, about everything else. 

“We don’t know what to think,” has been the answer, time and again. He might have found it amusing, only he feels much the same.

It’s quiet in the Traveler’s Walk, the sky at the half-light that passes for night, with so much light emanating from the city below. The only movement now is Shaxx striding toward him, armor pale against the stones. Shaxx always walks like a one of the big cats of old stalking prey, shoulders leading each step. Only Saladin and perhaps Zavala know him well enough to read the set of him, the subtle angles that give lie to supreme confidence and state that Shaxx is angry, or upset, or even frightened.

Shaxx, of course, is always angry. Has been angry, Saladin suspects, from the moment his Ghost woke him. Some men are just like that, fueled with a burning core of rage like a nuclear reactor, and a thousand times more volatile and deadly when breached.

#

Their first week of knowing each other, Shaxx does not sleep—something Saladin recalls that humans need to do regularly. Even exos need a bit of regular downtime for the purposes of maintenance. Concerned for his student—he’d always been so personally concerned in his students in those days—he takes a run through the Mothyards.

Shards of Fallen armor lie scattered across the ground. The crack of a fist hitting flesh, then armor, then flesh echoes. That is how Shaxx makes himself known.

Saladin pauses, waits, watches his student dance around the Vandal. He weaves between flashing knives, lands another solid blow that snaps the alien’s head around, and it falls. Shoulders heaving, Shaxx drops on top of it and keeps going until armor cracks and shatters, until flesh and bone mar the snow in a wide spray.

“Enough,” Saladin says. “It’s already dead. Save your energy for the next.”

Shaxx cocks his head up like a startled bird of prey, blood-smeared fist half raised. He’s cracked his own armor as well, Shaxx observes grimly.

With a snarl, he launches himself at Saladin. He’s been an attentive student in his short time in the Tower; he lands several solid punches before Saladin drives him to his knees with a solid roundhouse. 

“Enough,” Saladin repeats. 

Shaxx bows his head slowly, shoulders trembling. “As you wish.” No sorry. In less than a week, he’s established that he has a severe allergy to speaking that word.

Saladin offers him a hand, then; the stubborn man ignores it, standing on his own, though he sways a little on his feet. Huffing an annoyed sigh, he grabs Shaxx’s wrist to better inspect the damage he’s done to his armor. He feels the man’s arm shaking against his touch. Exhaustion? The vibration of barely contained anger? Perhaps both. “I know you can do better than this,” he says. “You must maintain control.”

“I understand.” Shaxx’s shoulders hunch slightly.

Perhaps he should ask what drives the man, but they all have their common pains, their confusion, the anguish of a why that will never be answered. They all deal with it in their own way. Instead of speaking, he reaches out to wrap his hand around the back of Shaxx’s neck. Exos weren’t meant for comfort; they were made for war. But he has learned this.

Shaxx makes a sound then, a strange one, like a moan and a sob had a daughter that wished to be a growl. Then he leans in against Saladin, the face plate of his helmet coming to rest against his shoulder. He’s still shaking; Saladin pretends not to notice.

#

There is more than anger in Shaxx now, as the man stalks up the stairs. Saladin inclines his head, sorting through the other times he has seen Shaxx in such a state. He can match the angles of body, the cadence of breath and heartbeat to memory.

Deliberately, he turns and walks behind the Iron Banner’s seal. Shaxx follows him; he knew that he would. 

He’s also not in the least surprised when Shaxx shoves him back against the seal. He feels the heat of the flames through his armor, but it isn’t enough to burn. Shaxx presses in against him, body against body from shoulder to thigh, and he hears the man’s ragged breathing, like he’s beaten another Fallen into paste.

They have done this before.

#

The air stinks of ash, fuel, and blood at Twilight Gap, but the guns have fallen silent for a moment. Regrouping, perhaps, for another assault.

Saladin desperately needs his own bit of recharge and repair time, but he checks on his former students. Harsh teacher he might have been, but students are the closest he will ever have to that learned concept of family. Zavala he finds snoring under one of the big guns; the man always could sleep anywhere. He leaves a self-heating can of coffee near him and moves on.

Shaxx, he finds on the wall, gripping it like he will tear it apart with his hands alone. 

“We lost so many today,” Shaxx says quietly. 

“But we held.” And for that, after calculating the odds of this day and the last several, he can be proud of his students.

“We cannot simply hold.” Shaxx finally looks at him. “We must attack, or one by one we will all fall.” He outlines, in a few words, his notion of distraction, flanking, counterattack upon the gathered Fallen.

Too many unknowns, too many assumptions. Saladin shakes his head, coming to stand next to him. “We are the rock, Shaxx. Let them break themselves on us.”

Shaxx is silent for a long moment, looking out over the blasted landscape of the gap. Then quietly, he says, “What if next it is you, or Zavala?”

“Have some faith.”

“I had faith in every Guardian who fell today. I think I’ve run out.”

There is no answer for that, really. Saladin does the only thing he knows might work, and rests his hand on the back of Shaxx’s neck. The man’s head bows as if it carries the weight of the world, and he leans in. One hand comes up to rest over Saladin’s. “And how many more might a direct push at their lines kill?” Saladin asks. “You cannot allow fear to drive you.”

Shaxx stiffens. “It isn’t fear.” He shrugs Saladin’s hand off and turns to leave.

“What, then?”

No answer; Shaxx walks away, shoulders set at that familiar, controlled angle of once more.

And he is right; Saladin can admit that a day and a half later, after the last Fallen has fled and the worst of the fires have been put out. He has never been too proud to admit his fallibility, if only in the quiet of his own mind. 

He’s also not in the least surprised when Shaxx finds him late that night. The man stinks of blood and alcohol esters, and wears armor with its original color lost under charring and dirt. Saladin even puts himself in a quiet place so that he and Shaxx can have the argument about who was right and who was wrong he assumes will follow in a bit of peace. 

He doesn’t expect Shaxx to push him against the wall, one knee sliding between his legs not to pin him, but to hold him in place. Doesn’t expect the man to fumble his helmet off and drop it on the floor with a loud crack, one of the horns snapping off and rolling away. He sees brown eyes, a crooked nose, close-cropped black hair and dark skin, and it looks wrong somehow because it’s been so long since he’s seen Shaxx in anything but armor.

He’s bemused enough that he doesn’t even try to stop Shaxx when the man pries his own helmet off. The entire world is foreign without the additional HUD inputs, just his optical sensors.

Shaxx rests his hands on either side of Saladin’s face. “I did it,” he says.

“You did,” Saladin agrees. 

“I was right.”

“You were.” He’d expected this.

“You were wrong.”

“We’ll never know.”

Shaxx laughs, and it sounds like a sob. “You stubborn bastard.” 

This isn’t the first time Shaxx has called him that. It won’t be the last, he assumes. But there’s something in Shaxx’s eyes that he can’t quite read; he’s never been particularly good at human facial expressions, and has never needed to be. But he can feel Shaxx’s hands trembling—exhaustion? drunkenness? emotion?—and then the man draws him down to press their mouths together in a kiss.

Exos weren’t made for that, either. There’s nothing yielding to them, no sensory inputs or programming to make it as pleasurable as humans seem to find it. But the bigger question is what it is supposed to mean. He remembers little gestures, when Shaxx was still his student, touches that seemed to last a bit too long, the feeling he was being watched. He’d ignored it then, uncertain how to deal with it, not knowing what it meant other than it seemed highly inappropriate.

Saladin brings up his hand to rest against the back of Shaxx’s neck. The man inhales sharply, pulls back enough that Saladin can see his eyes again. “I’m—” he’s never been one for sorry, and swallows the word. “I need to—” His eyes are wide enough to drown in, and even Saladin can see the pain and emptiness there, the non-corporeal ghosts that haunt him.

Exos see everything in calculations, and while they feel fear—fear is the great teacher, after all—they are not overly burdened with guilt, with what-ifs. They can be overwhelmed with trauma, perhaps, but they do not crack like humans. They break all at once, shatter into a series of interlocking, impossible programming loops that can only be repaired by a hard memory wipe. But he has known enough humans to understand their pain, to fear for them, and Shaxx he understands best of all. He might be the only person who does, except for Zavala.

Saladin leans to rest their foreheads together as Shaxx’s hands scrabble at his armor. He makes no move to stop him, just stroking the side of the man’s neck with his thumb as he releases the catches on the chestplate, finds the living alloy beneath. He rubs his hand against Saladin’s chest, stomach, searching for something. His hands go further, find the waist, release that, sliding in to search at the groin where there would be something, had Saladin been human. That wasn’t a function Exos needed to have, however. Still he touches that blank spot on Saladin’s metalloid skin, rubs with fingers and palm, looking up at him with searching eyes.

Shaxx’s breath sobs out again. “Don’t you feel anything?”

“I do. But not as you do.” And when Shaxx tries to shove him away, he doesn’t allow it, keeping his arm tight around his back. His other hand find’s Shaxx’s cheek, thumb smoothing away the moisture he finds there.

“Damn you,” Shaxx whispers.

#

It is those two words again that hiss through the filters of Shaxx’s helmet. Saladin hears the sounds of those ghosts, those traumas, that endless anger in that voice.

And he does as he has done 23 other times, starting at Twilight Gap. one hand coming to rest against the back of Shaxx’s neck, holding him. He pulls off the gauntlet from the other hand as Shaxx snarls against him and slides his fingers inexorably down. He skates past armor, finds his waist, releases the necessary catches. He finds warm skin beneath that trembles as he touches it, light enough to be pleasurable rather than painful. He can and has traced the contour of each of Shaxx's muscles and seen the man writhe for it.

Shaxx’s breath hitches, his fingers curling around the edges of Saladin’s chest plate. His cock is already half-hard, precum wetting the tip when Saladin finds it, slides his fingers over it with exquisite care and urges it fully erect with the motion of his palm. Shaxx grinds the forehead of his helmet against Saladin’s, a sound too angry to be a moan but not quite savage enough for a snarl coming from him. His cock twitches against Saladin's wrist, eager as he reaches lower to cup his balls. Saladin's always found the arrangement of those organs both nonsensical—for their vulnerability—and strangely fascinating—for the way slow manipulation and light touch leave Shaxx panting.

"Do it." The words come Shaxx like they've been dragged from between his teeth as he presses his cock into Saladin's hand. "Darkness take you." 

But that's the admission he wants to hear. He wraps his fingers around Shaxx's cock and hears him moan, feels his hands give him one sharp shake. Saladin knows the rhythm of this, the slow strokes, the fast, pausing to roll his thumb over the tip of Shaxx’s cock to simply hear him gasp and feel him tremble. He lets Shaxx rut into his hand, his hips jerking faster, measuring his heartbeats until he goes stiff with he completion of that act, a half-swallowed moan heralding the wash of fluid that follows. Saladin holds him a little more tightly as he goes quiet in that moment of release, thumb stroking the side of the man’s neck lightly.

He can’t see Shaxx’s face now, but he remembers the expression he’d seen, the day the battle had ended at Twilight’s Gap: eyes half-closed, lips parted, face slack and for once devoid of both anger and the exquisite control he uses to hide it. Peace, for just a few breaths. Is that the real Shaxx, or the man whom he has help craft into the Crucible? What he wants most of all is to see that again, and steal a measure of that peace for himself in the observing. There is something indescribably beautiful about it, something that should be his alone. But the only time he has tried to pull Shaxx’s helmet off, permission was denied with a solid punch to the neck.

Shaxx laughs, low in his throat, once his breathing is back under control. “You still don’t feel anything,” he accuses, shoving away. He tries to hard, to make these encounters into combat. Perhaps because that, they can both understand.

Saladin lets him go. “I do,” he repeats. “But not as you do.”

“Selfish bastard,” Shaxx whispers as he reorders his armor. Then he turns on his heel and stalks away.

Exos weren’t made for this, but they can learn to find pleasure in their own way, in knowing they are uniquely needed, in caring, in being cared for, wanted. In the satisfaction of seeing someone else completely disarmed.

And exos were made to win, above all things.

Saladin finds a scrap of cloth to wipe off his hand before he retakes his place, standing before the Iron Banner as if nothing at all has happened.


End file.
